"bailiwick" poems
Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.
Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.
At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy
As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.
Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.
A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly
With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.
The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.
41.9k
The night outside was a solid mist
You couldn’t see past three feet,
Or so she thought, the Telephonist
As she came back in from the street.
There was no point following Jill and Tim
For the mist had swallowed them up,
They’d wandered out for a drink before
To head for the ‘Stirrup Cup’.
So Caryn finally went inside
And stood by the lounge room door,
There was blood, red blood on the candlestick,
There was blood, red blood on the floor,
She opened her mouth and she tried to scream
But couldn’t begin to shout,
She seemed to be locked in a crazy dream
And the folk in the house were out.
There wasn’t a body that she could see
But chills ran over her spine,
She wondered about her sister, Jill,
Then thought, ‘I’m sure she’s fine!’
But Tim, now there was a moody man
And his anger knew no bounds,
She’d hidden from him in her room before
When he’d stomped the house and grounds.
She staggered into the street again
There must be someone to call,
She felt her way through the garden gate
There was blood, red blood on the wall,
And a trail of blood lay under her feet
That led to the ‘Stirrup Cup’,
She felt the gorge rise up in her throat,
She was close to throwing up.
She felt her way through the evening mist
Stuck close to the kerb as well,
There was blood all over the bailiwick
As she called her sister’s cell,
It rang and rang ‘til it rang right out
And Caryn let out a moan,
But then a text on her tiny screen
That said one word, ‘Alone!’
She felt so faint that she stumbled then
Her head was a pounding wreck,
There was blood, red blood in her auburn hair,
There was blood on her cheek and neck,
She seemed to glide to the further wall
And caught herself looking down,
Down to the blood where her body lay
All crumpled, there on the ground.
And Jill and Tim found her lying there
As they walked by a stranded bus,
‘Oh God, it’s Caryn, my sister, Tim,
She must have been following us!’
They called the Police and they got back home
To find the blood on the wall,
There was blood, red blood on the candlestick
And blood all over the hall.
While Caryn drifts in a nightly mist
That you can’t see past three feet,
She used to be a Telephonist
But now she’s lost in the street.
Wherever she turns there’s blood, red blood
But she can’t believe it’s hers,
She seems to be locked in a crazy dream
Of a never ending curse!
David Lewis Paget
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 11:40 PM UTC
*To the herdsman counting his flock in the moonlight
The plowman repairing his tractor by lantern- light
The wood splitter , the fence builder , framer and rail tender
Architects of frozen December morns
Unsung engineers , freight worker and brakemen
'Twould be a privilege indeed to sup cold beer with the countries heroes , privy to stories of hardship and raw weather days endured by these American patriots
Iron tooled with steel , the churning grist mill , diesel engine roar ,
black earth turned anew , billowing steam settled over valley floors
Masters of metal , brake and die , machine and anvil
The crack of the peen long before sunrise
'Tis the bailiwick of farmer and tradesman* ..
Oct 21, 2016
Oct 21, 2016 at 11:23 PM UTC
When a class is boring, the air can feel close and rebreathed - not a comfortable feeling for a COVID child. When the class is finally over, it’s like you’ve escaped something.
Did you know an hour has 60 minutes because ancient Babylonians used a seximal system? (base six).
The class I was in was small, just eight of us around a table in a small room (four students were missing that day) and somehow the class had wandered into the unstable, waring, state of the world.
The professor ended his unscheduled thought, on the result of nuclear war, by saying, “After the nuclear exchanges, when cockroaches take over..”
“No,” I interrupted - it was a flashbulb moment - an impulse. I don’t usually interrupt professors, “Ants. Ants would take over - they’re mobile super-organisms, cockroaches are just meat to them.”
His smile and nod of approval felt warm and cozy, as if my emotions had a texture and temperature - but I knew it was something assigned to me briefly, like a motel room.
Nuclear survival isn’t exactly my bailiwick, I’m not sure where I picked that thought up or why I had the confidence to offer it. Confidence is a thin lever to work with when talking to a professor. I’ve seen professors crush brash students.
The bell rang, I had survived, and Leong was waiting for me in the hall. The crowd in the hall was moving on toward their classes, like water splashing in every direction. Leong barked a laugh. “What?” I asked.
“Neh,” she said, waving her hand (meaning forget it).
“What?” I asked again.
“When I was little, I would visit my grandparents' farm, in Shandong (province, China). They would call their cows in with a bell,” she said, motioning, with both hands to include the crowded hall.
“We’re the most privileged cows in the universe,” she suggested smilingly.
“I suppose we are,” I agreed, as we passed out into a wind as cold and harsh as witches' breath.
Jan 30, 2024
Jan 30, 2024 at 12:30 AM UTC
As par and parcel of being
alive wire impossible aye
to maintain totally tubularly
literarily celibate by and bye
with parochial restraint antiseptic dry
as dust poetic refrains
asper this healthy older guy
devoid of physical whim zee
unlike a inscrutable eunuch...so hi
there dear reader experienced
by this self contrived Zen
minded nonestablishmentarian outlier,
whose nonconformist yen
tries to steer clear of controversy,
heresy, prurient wen
unless one happened
to be eunuchized,
i.e. sexless as a cold oven,
but similar to generic men
this writerly hen
pecked husband dully
drumming, droning, and
dribbling as a lix spittle
aged chap housed within
Schwenksville, Pennsylvania bailiwick
though far less inclined
to whet ma lil atrophied dipstick
than some young buck
at the peak of his ****** prowess
every now and again viz,
aye feel a much slighter sensation
drubbing, crackling, and
buckling mine body electric
and attempt to record
re: font ten blue type
boldface and/or Italic
such infrequently occurring
fleeting Johnson magic
speculating why the
hoo ha regarding mystic
spell binding codas,
dogmas, and enigmas,
an integral component naturalistic
within the calculus of life,
when human species
(parenthetically), naturally, inherently,
and biologically opportunistic
akin to other organisms whose quixotic
antics allow NON GMO,
MSG, and gluten free,
and uncensored discussion
asper reproductive habits rhapsodic
with floral and/or faunal symphonic
emanations donning each their own
"NON FAKE" trumpeting
spectacular humbly modest
rubric, yet...universalistic
as being linkedin
within the cosmic whirled wide web.
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 4:00 PM UTC
The time is now
If I know how
To leap with all my might
Openly trust
Myself I must
Life's acolyte
Standing Steady
At the ready
To let go of this ground
Leaning in
Trust the wind
Absence of all sound
Eyes close tight
Fear I might
Plummet to my demise
Hold my breath
Brace for death
The Illusion does belie
Backward Rules
Make us fools
The answer's in the trick
Decend to rise
Counterclockwise
A new bailiwick
Oct 16, 2017
Oct 16, 2017 at 2:11 PM UTC